The Vicissitudes of Evangeline

They are extraordinarily cheerful, because it is a Christian virtue, cheerfulness; not because they are brimming over with joy, or that lovely feeling of being alive, and not minding much what happens, you feel so splendid, like I get on fine days.

Everything they do has a reason or a moral in it. This party is because pheasants have to be killed in November – and certain people have to be entertained, and their charities can be assisted through them. Oh! if I had a big house, and were rich, I would have lovely parties, with all sorts of nice people, because I wanted to give them a good time and laugh myself. Lady Verningham was talking to me just before tea, when the second train load arrived.

I tried to be quite indifferent, but I did feel dreadfully excited when Lord Robert walked in. Oh! he looked such a beautiful creature, so smart, and straight, and lithe!

Lady Katherine was frightfully stiff with him; it would have discouraged most people, but that is the lovely part about Lord Robert, he is always absolutely sans gêne!

He saw me at once, of course, and came over as straight as a die the moment he could.

“How do, Robert!” said Lady Verningham, looking very surprised to see him, and giving him her fingers in such an attractive way. How are you here? And why is our Campie not? Thereby hangs some tale, I feel sure!”

“Why, yes!” said Lord Robert, and he held her hand. Then he looked at me with his eyebrows up. “But won’t you introduce me to Miss Travers? to my great chagrin she seems to have forgotten me!”

I laughed, and Lady Verningham introduced us, and he sat down beside us, and every one began tea.

Lady Verningham had such a look in her eye!

“Robert, tell me about it!” she said.

“I hear they have five thousand pheasants to slay,” Lord Robert replied, looking at her with his innocent smile.

“Robert, you are lying!” she said, and she laughed. She is so pretty when she laughs, not very young, over thirty I should think, but such a charm! As different as different can be from the whole Montgomerie family!

I hardly spoke, they continued to tease one another, and Lord Robert ate most of a plate of bread and butter that was near.

“I am dam’d hungry, Lady Ver!” he said. She smiled at him; she evidently likes him very much.

“Robert! you must not use such language here!” she said.

“Oh, doesn’t he say them often! those dams!” I burst out, not thinking for a moment – then I stopped, remembering. She did seem surprised.

“So you have heard them before! I thought you had only just met casually!” she said, with such a comic look of understanding, but not absolutely pleased. I stupidly got crimson, it did annoy me, because it shows so dreadfully on my skin. She leant back in her chair, and laughed.

“It is delightful to shoot five thousand pheasants, Robert,” she said.

“Now, isn’t it?” replied Lord Robert. He had finished the bread and butter.

Then he told her she was a dear, and he was glad something had suggested to Mr. Campion that he would have other views of living for this week.

“You are a joy, Robert!” she said, “but you will have to behave here. None of the tricks you played at Fotherington in October, my child. Aunt Katherine would put you in a corner. Miss Travers has been here a week, and can tell you I am truthful about it.”

“Indeed, yes!” I said.

“But I must know how you got here,” she commanded.

Just then, fortunately, Malcolm, who had been hovering near, came up and joined us, and would talk too; but if he had been a table, or a chair, he could not have mattered less to Lord Robert! He is quite wonderful! He is not the least rude, only perfectly simple and direct, always getting just what he wants, with rather an appealing expression in his blue eyes. In a minute or two he and I were talking together, and Malcolm and Lady Verningham a few yards off. I felt so happy. He makes one like that, I don’t know for what reason.

“Why did you look so stonily indifferent when I came up,” he asked. “I was afraid you were annoyed with me for coming.”

Then I told him about Lady Katherine, and my stupidly not having mentioned meeting him at Branches.

“Oh! then I stayed with Christopher after you left – I see,” he said. “Had I met you in London?”

“We won’t tell any stories about it. They can think what they please.”

“Very well!” he laughed. “I can see I shall have to manœuvre a good deal to talk quietly to you here, but you will stand with me, won’t you, out shooting to-morrow!”

I told him I did not suppose we should be allowed to go out, except perhaps for lunch – but he said he refused to believe in such cruelty.

Then he asked me a lot of things about how I had been getting on, and what I intended to do next. He has the most charming way of making one feel that one knows him very well, he looks at one every now and then straight in the eyes, with astonishing frankness. I have never seen any person so quite without airs, I don’t suppose he is ever thinking a bit the effect he is producing. Nothing has two meanings with him like with Mr. Carruthers. If he had said I was to stay and marry him, I am sure he would have meant it, and I really believe I should have stayed!

“Do you remember our morning packing?” he said, presently, in such a caressing voice. “I was so happy, weren’t you?”

I said I was.

“And Christopher was mad with us! He was like a bear with a sore head after you left, and insisted upon going up to town on Monday just for the day; he came over here on Tuesday, didn’t he?”

“No, he did not,” I was obliged to say, and I felt cross about it still, I don’t know why.

“He is a queer creature,” said Lord Robert, “and I am glad you have not seen him – I don’t want him in the way. I am a selfish brute, you know.”

I said Mrs. Carruthers had always brought me up to know men were that, so such a thing would not prejudice me against him.

He laughed. “You must help me to come and sit and talk again, after dinner,” he said. “I can see the red-haired son means you for himself, but, of course, I shall not allow that!”

I became uppish.

“Malcolm and I are great friends,” I said, demurely. “He walks me round the golf course in the park, and gives me advice.”

“Confounded impertinence!” said Lord Robert.

“He thinks I ought not to go to Claridge’s alone when I leave here, in case some one made love to me. He feels if I looked more like his sisters it would be safer. I have promised that Véronique shall stay at the other side of the door if I have visitors.”

“Oh, he is afraid of that, is he! Well, I think it is very probable his fears will be realized, as I shall be in London,” said Lord Robert.

“But how do you know,” I began, with a questioning, serious air; “how do you know I should listen? You can’t go on to deaf people, can you?”

“Are you deaf?” he asked. “I don’t think so, anyway I would try to cure your deafness.” He bent close over to me, pretending to pick up a book.

Oh, I was having such a nice time!

All of a sudden I felt I was really living, the blood was jumping in my veins, and a number of provoking, agreeable things came to the tip of my tongue to say, and I said them. We were so happy!

Lord Robert is such a beautiful shape, that pleased me too; the perfect lines of things always give me a nice emotion. The other men look thick and clumsy beside him, and he does have such lovely clothes and ties!

We talked on and on. He began to show me he was deeply interested in me. His eyes, so blue and expressive, said even more than his words. I like to see him looking down; his eyelashes are absurdly long and curly, not jet black like mine and Mr. Carruthers’, but dark brown and soft, and shaded, and oh! I don’t know how to say quite why they are so attractive. When one sees them half resting on his cheek it makes one feel it would be nice to put out the tip of one’s finger, and touch them. I never spent such a delightful afternoon. Only alas! it was all too short.

“We will arrange to sit together after dinner,” he whispered, as even before the dressing gong had rung Lady Katherine came and fussed about, and collected every one, and more or less drove them off to dress, saying, on the way upstairs, to me, that I need not come down if I had rather not!

I thanked her again, but remained firm in my intention of accustoming myself to company.

Stay in my room, indeed, with Lord Robert at dinner – never!

However, when I did come down, he was surrounded by Montgomeries, and pranced into the dining-room with Lady Verningham. She must have arranged that.

I had such a bore! A young Mackintosh cousin of Mary’s husband, and on the other side the parson. The one talked about botany in a hoarse whisper, with a Scotch accent, and the other gobbled his food, and made kind of pious jokes in between the mouthfuls!

I said – when I had borne it bravely up to the ices – I hated knowing what flowers were composed of, I only liked to pick them. The youth stared, and did not speak much more. For the parson, “yes” now and then did, and like that we got through dinner.

Malcolm was opposite me, and he gaped most of the time. Even he might have been better than the botanist, but I suppose Lady Katherine felt these two would be a kind of half mourning for me. No one could have felt gay with them.

After dinner Lady Verningham took me over to a sofa with her, in a corner. The sofas here don’t have pillows, as at Branches, but fortunately this one is a little apart, though not comfortable, and we could talk.

“You poor child,” she said, “you had a dull time. I was watching you! What did that McTavish creature find to say to you?”

I told her, and that his name was Mackintosh, not McTavish.

“Yes, I know,” she said, “but I call the whole clan McTavish – it is near enough, and it does worry Mary so; she corrects me every time. Now don’t you want to get married, and be just like Mary?” There was a twinkle in her eye.

I said I had not felt wild about it yet. I wanted to go and see life first.

But she told me one couldn’t see life unless one was married.

“Not even if one is an adventuress, like me?” I asked.

“A what!!”

“An adventuress,” I said. “People do seem so astonished when I say that! I have got to be one, you know, because Mrs. Carruthers never left me the money after all, and in the book I read about it, it said you were that if you had nice clothes, and – and – red hair – and things and no home.”

She rippled all over with laughter.

“You duck!” she said. “Now you and I will be friends. Only you must not play with Robert Vavasour. He belongs to me! He is one of my special and particular own pets. Is it a bargain?”

I do wish now I had had the pluck then to say straight out that I rather liked Lord Robert, and would not make any bargain, but one is foolish sometimes when taken suddenly. It is then when I suppose it shows if one’s head is screwed on firmly, and mine wasn’t to-night. But she looked so charming, and I felt a little proud, and perhaps ashamed to show that I am very much interested in Lord Robert, especially if he belongs to her, whatever that means, and so I said it was a bargain, and of course I had never thought of playing with him, but when I came to reflect afterwards, that is a promise, I suppose, and I sha’n’t be able to look at him any more under my eyelashes. And I don’t know why I feel very wide awake and tired, and rather silly, and as if I wanted to cry to-night.

However, she was awfully kind to me, and lovely, and has asked me to go and stay with her, and lots of nice things, so it is all for the best, no doubt. But when Lord Robert came in, and came over to us, it did feel hard having to get up at once and go and pretend I wanted to talk to Malcolm.

I did not dare to look up often, but sometimes, and I found Lord Robert’s eyes were fixed on me with an air of reproach and entreaty, and the last time there was wrath as well?

Lady Verningham kept him with her until every one started to go to bed.

There had been music and bridge, and other boring diversions happening, but I sat still. And I don’t know what Malcolm had been talking about, I had not been listening, though I kept murmuring “Yes” and “No.”

He got more and more empressé, until suddenly I realized he was saying, as we rose:

“You have promised! Now remember, and I shall ask you to keep it – to-morrow!”

And there was such a loving, mawkish, wobbly look in his eyes, it made me feel quite sick. The horrible part is, I don’t know what I have promised any more than the man in the moon! It may be something perfectly dreadful, for all I know! Well, if it is a fearful thing, like kissing him, I shall have to break my word, – which I never do for any consideration whatever.

Oh, dear! oh, dear! it is not always so easy to laugh at life as I once thought! I almost wish I were settled down, and had not to be an adventuress. Some situations are so difficult. I think now I shall go to bed.

I wonder if Lord Robert – no, what is the good of wondering; he is no longer my affair.

I shall blow out the light!

300, Park Street,Saturday night, Nov. 19th.

I do not much care to look back to the rest of my stay at Tryland. It is an unpleasant memory.

That next day after I last wrote, it poured with rain, and every one came down cross to breakfast. The whole party appeared except Lady Verningham, and breakfast was just as stiff and boring as dinner. I happened to be seated when Lord Robert came in, and Malcolm was in the place beside me. Lord Robert hardly spoke, and looked at me once, or twice, with his eyebrows right up.

I did long to say it was because I had promised Lady Ver I would not play with him that I was not talking to him now like the afternoon before. I wonder if he ever guessed it. Oh! I wished then, and I have wished a hundred times since, that I had never promised at all. It seemed as if it would be wisest to avoid him, as how could I explain the change in myself. I hated the food, and Malcolm had such an air of proprietorship, it annoyed me as much as I could see it annoyed Lady Katherine. I sniffed at him, and was as disagreeable as could be.

The breakfasts there don’t shine, and porridge is pressed upon people by Mr. Montgomerie. “Capital stuff to begin the day, Bur-r-r-r,” he says.

Lord Robert could not find anything he wanted, it seemed. Every one was peevish. Lady Katherine has a way of marshalling people on every occasion; she reminds me of a hen with chickens, putting her wings down, and clucking, and chasing, till they are all in a corner. And she is rather that shape, too, very much rounded in front. The female brood soon found themselves in the morning-room, with the door shut, and no doubt the male things fared the same with their host, anyway we saw no more of them till we caught sight of them passing the windows in ’scutums and mackintoshes, a depressed company of sportsmen.

The only fortunate part was that Malcolm had found no opportunity to remind me of my promise, whatever it was, and I felt safer.

Oh! that terrible morning! Much worse than when we were alone – nearly all of them – about seven women beyond the family – began fancy work.

One, a Lady Letitia Smith, was doing a crewel silk blotting-book that made me quite bilious to look at, and she was very short-sighted, and had such an irritating habit of asking every one to match her threads for her. They knitted ties and stockings, and crocheted waistcoats and comforters and hoods for the North Sea fishermen, and one even tatted. Just like housemaids do in their spare hours to trim Heaven knows what garment of unbleached calico.

I asked her what it was for, and she said for the children’s pinafores in her “Guild” work. If one doesn’t call that waste of time, I wonder what is!

Mrs. Carruthers said it was much more useful to learn to sit still and not fidget than to fill the world with rubbish like this.

Mary Mackintosh dominated the conversation. She and Lady Letitia Smith, who have both small babies, revelled in nursery details, and then whispered bits for us – the young girls – not to hear. We caught scraps though, and it sounded gruesome, whatever it was about. Oh! I do wonder when I get married if I shall grow like them.

I hope not.

It is no wonder married men are obliged to say gallant things to other people, if, when they get home, their wives are like that.

I tried to be agreeable to a lady who was next me. She was a Christian Scientist, and wore glasses. She endeavoured to convert me, but I was abnormally thick-headed that day, and had to have things explained over and over, so she gave it up at last.

Finally when I felt I should do something desperate, a footman came to say Lady Verningham wished to see me in her room, and I bounded up – but as I got to the door I saw them beginning to shake their heads over her.

“Sad that dear Ianthe has such irregular habits of breakfasting in her room – so bad for her,” etc., etc., but thank heaven, I was soon outside in the hall, where her maid was waiting for me.

One would hardly have recognized that it was a Montgomerie apartment, the big room overlooking the porch, where she was located. So changed did its aspect seem! She had numbers of photographs about, and the loveliest gold toilet things, and lots of frilled garments, and flowers, and scent bottles, and her own pillows propping her up, all blue silk, and lovely muslin embroideries, and she did look such a sweet cosy thing among it all. Her dark hair in fluffs round her face, and an angelic lace cap over it. She was smoking a cigarette, and writing numbers of letters with a gold stylograph pen. The blue silk quilt was strewn with correspondence, and newspapers, and telegraph forms. And her garment was low-necked, of course, and thin like mine are. I wondered what Alexander would have thought if he could have seen her in contrast to Mary! I know which I would choose if I were a man!

“Oh, there you are!” she exclaimed, looking up and puffing smoke clouds. “Sit on the bye-bye, Snake-girl. I felt I must rescue you from the horde of Holies below, and I wanted to look at you in the daylight. Yes, you have extraordinary hair, and real eyelashes and complexion, too. You are a witch thing, I can see, and we shall all have to beware of you!”

I smiled. She did not say it rudely, or I should have been uppish at once. She has a wonderful charm.

“You don’t speak much, either,” she continued. “I feel you are dangerous! that is why I am being so civil to you; I think it wisest. I can’t stand girls as a rule!” And she went into one of her ripples of laughter. “Now say you will not hurt me!”

“I should not hurt anyone,” I said, “unless they hurt me first – and I like you – you are so pretty.”

“That is all right,” she said, “then we are comrades. I was frightened about Robert last evening, because I am so attached to him, but you were a darling after dinner, and it will be all right now; I told him you would probably marry Malcolm Montgomerie, and he was not to interfere.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind!” I exclaimed, moving off the bed. “I would as soon die as spend the rest of my life here at Tryland.”

“He will be fabulously rich one day, you know, and you could get round Père Montgomerie in a trice, and revolutionize the whole place. You had better think of it.”

“I won’t,” I said, and I felt my eyes sparkle. She put up her hands as if to ward off an evil spirit, and she laughed again.

“Well, you sha’n’t then! Only don’t flash those emeralds at me, they give me quivers all over!”

“Would you like to marry Malcolm?” I asked, and I sat down again. “Fancy being owned by that! Fancy seeing it every day! Fancy living with a person who never sees a joke from week’s end to week’s end. Oh!”

“As for that” – and she puffed smoke – “husbands are a race apart – there are men, women, and husbands, and if they pay bills, and shoot big game in Africa, it is all one ought to ask of them; to be able to see jokes is superfluous. Mine is most inconvenient, because he generally adores me, and at best only leaves me for a three weeks’ cure at Homburg, and now and then a week in Paris, but Malcolm could be sent to the Rocky Mountains, and places like that, continuously; he is quite a sportsman.”

“That is not my idea of a husband,” I said.

“Well, what is your idea, Snake-girl?”

“Why do you call me ‘Snake-girl?’” I asked. “I hate snakes.”

She took her cigarette out of her mouth, and looked at me for some seconds.

“Because you are so sinuous, there is not a stiff line about your movements – you are utterly wicked looking and attractive too, and un-English, and what in the world Aunt Katherine asked you here for, with those hideous girls, I can’t imagine. I would not have if my three angels were grown up, and like them.” Then she showed me the photographs of her three angels – they are pets.

But my looks seemed to bother her, for she went back to the subject.

“Where do you get them from? Was your mother some other nation?”

I told her how poor mamma had been rather an accident, and was nobody much. “One could not tell, you see, she might have had any quaint creature beyond the grandparents – perhaps I am mixed with Red Indian, or nigger.”

She looked at me searchingly.

“No, you are not, you are Venetian – that is it – some wicked, beautiful friend of a Doge come to life again.”

“I know I am wicked,” I said; “I am always told it, but I have not done anything yet, or had any fun out of it, and I do want to.”

She laughed again.

“Well, you must come to London with me when I leave here on Saturday, and we will see what we can do.”

This sounded so nice, and yet I had a feeling that I wanted to refuse; if there had been a tone of patronage in her voice, I would have in a minute. We sat and talked a long time, and she did tell me some interesting things. The world, she assured me, was a delightful place if one could escape bores, and had a good cook and a few friends. After a while I left her, as she suddenly thought she would come down to luncheon.

“I don’t think it would be safe, at the present stage, to leave you alone with Robert,” she said.

I was angry.

“I have promised not to play with him, is that not enough!” I exclaimed.

“Do you know, I believe it is, Snake-girl!” she said, and there was something wistful in her eyes, “but you are twenty, and I am past thirty, and – he is a man! – so one can’t be too careful!” Then she laughed, and I left her putting a toe into a blue satin slipper, and ringing for her maid.

I don’t think age can matter much, she is far far more attractive than any girl, and she need not pretend she is afraid of me. But the thing that struck me then, and has always struck me since is that to have to hold a man by one’s own manœuvres could not be agreeable to one’s self-respect. I would never do that under any circumstances; if he would not stay because it was the thing he wanted to do most in the world, he might go. I should say, “Je m’en fiche!”

At luncheon, for which the guns came in, – no nice picnic in a lodge as at Branches – I purposely sat between two old gentlemen, and did my best to be respectful and intelligent. One was quite a nice old thing, and at the end began paying me compliments. He laughed, and laughed at everything I said. Opposite me were Malcolm and Lord Robert, with Lady Ver between them. They both looked sulky. It was quite a while before she could get them gay and pleasant. I did not enjoy myself.

After it was over, Lord Robert deliberately walked up to me.

“Why are you so capricious?” he asked. “I won’t be treated like this, you know very well I have only come here to see you. We are such friends – or were. Why?”

Oh! I did want to say I was friends still, and would love to talk to him. He seemed so adorably good looking, and such a shape! and his blue eyes had the nicest flash of anger in them.

I could have kept my promise to the letter, and yet broken it in the spirit, easily enough, by letting him understand by inference – but of course one could not be so mean as that, when one was going to eat her salt, so I looked out of the window, and answered coldly that I was quite friendly, and did not understand him, and I immediately turned to my old gentleman, and walked with him into the library. In fact I was as cool as I could be without being actually rude, but all the time there was a flat, heavy feeling round my heart. He looked so cross and reproachful, and I did not like him to think me capricious.